Once someone begins to exert some form of control over someone else, that control is rarely relinquished without some form of external force, a woman who is beaten by an abusive husband rarely leaves the marriage.
Over the last two years or so now, the Satanic forces have attempted to exert control not over just a few, but over all that live on this planet, and the Lord is allowing it for an intended end, for His glory. Those that have been employed, for lack of a better word, by our adversary I would presume have been reassured of great rewards. “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 John 2:16) These are three of the greatest tools of our adversary, and most men are easily swayed by those items of the world that he offers.
The antichrist, the false prophet and the beast will indeed rule this entire planet, none will stop them, it is ordained. I would ask you to notice something here though, something that just recently occurred to me, how all focus, even in most of the secular world is upon the antichrist, and how little is brought up about the other two, the false prophet, the one who will be the head over the one world religious organization that will come about, and the beast, the enforcer, if you will of the will of the antichrist. I believe this is by design, for if there is one thing that almost every human being holds as a most personal item, even if they do not express it in public, it is their religious ideologies, the tenets of some form of faith no matter how absurd, that they hold fast to.
Satan is subtle, he is beyond a genius, he has had thousands of years to study us, and he knows exactly what nearly every single person’s price is, what they want and what they will give for it. Those in authority over us are always put there by the Lord God, (Romans 13:1) always for His glory, but not always for the best good of the populace, at least not in the eyes of mankind. In recent memory one can recall Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin, all were set in place by the Lord. Nearly all of these evil men, including many of those that are in control of nations today, have followed the same path, “It is for the best for all of us,” and of course as history shows it was, at least those that they decided were the ones who were to receive “the best.”
Whether they be principalities, powers or dominions (Eph. 6:12) the Lord has placed them there, and this time, as it has occurred in every other time, those who have power rarely relinquish it easily.
The so-called “kind” leaders of today desire to either enslave us or kill us, it matters little to them which one occurs. In those days that are approaching, anyone who does not have the mark of the beast will suffer horribly, and I ask you to notice that, not the mark of the antichrist, but of the beast. Those who will not adhere to the tenets that will be set down by the false prophet will indeed suffer as well.
I could be wrong, for this is only conjecture, but common sense says that those brothers and sisters of ours who will live in the time of Jacob’s Trouble will not suffer so much because they refuse to take the mark, for Matthew 6:33 will still stand as truth, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” but they will be hunted down and killed because they will expose the false prophet and his evil, sinful religious organization for what it is, an offense to the Most High.
I do not think they will be hindered by the so-called Christian ideas of today of being kind and polite to those cults that surround us now, they will speak up, and they will not love their lives to the end. (Rev. 12:11) Oh, that we could learn from those yet to come.